Monday, January 15, 2018

An interview with Frederick Luis Aldama regarding his new book, “Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics”

To call Frederick
Luis Aldama one of the hardest working people in academia, the arts, and
literature would not be hyperbole. Aldama not only is the Arts and Humanities
Distinguished Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at the
Ohio State University, he is also the author, co-author, and editor of about 30
books (I have to hedge here on the number because he keeps on publishing books
at a terrific rate…it’s hard to keep up).

Aldama is an acclaimed
expert on Latinx popular culture, and his books include Long Stories Cut Short: Fictions from the Borderlands, Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus
Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez, and The
Cinema of Robert Rodriguez. Aldama is also the creator of a website on all things Latinx, and another website
where he curates hundreds of original pieces on comics and comic authors from
all over the world.

In short, Aldama is
everywhere.

I had the
opportunity to read one of his latest books, Latinx
Superheroes in Mainstream Comics (University of Arizona Press). Aldama
does it again with this entertaining, thoughtful, and thought-provoking study
of how, since the 1940s, the comic book industry has presented the Latinx
superhero. Aldama took time out of his busy schedule to chat with La Bloga about this delightfully
engaging book.

Frederick Luis Aldama

Daniel Olivas: What is it about the Latinx
superhero that fascinates/inspires/moves you?

Frederick
Luis Aldama: I love my comic book superheroes—and this since time immemorial.
As a mixed Irish-Guatemalan-Mexican kid raised on a single mamá’s income while
surviving in and around Sacramento in the ‘70s, they were my magic ticket to
the Beyond. It wasn’t just the Anglo A-listers that populated the spin-racks at
our corner store that caught my imagination. It was also the strong
gravitational pull of fotonovela storyworlds filled with muscled, masked
Mex-luchadores like Blue Demon and El Santo or slick cosmopolitan adventures of
Egypto-Mex Kalimán and the swashbuckling Zorro that offered superheroic
identity molds that I could pour myself into. And I left no stone unturned
here. Long before I knew about the Rasquachismo Chicanx art movement, I was recycling discarded clothes and
sheets into costumes that hybridized the luchador getup with those of Batman,
Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man…you name it.
Costumed up, I ran faster, jumped higher, threw farther, heard more
attentively.

As a crumbsnatcher with limited access to the full range of
mainstream comics, I didn’t know about Nuyorican Hector Ayala as White Tiger. I
did know a lot about Batman. There was something deeply relatable about how he
had to work hard for his muscles and smarts; they weren’t a, say,
Krypton-right of birth. As that hybrid luchador/Batman not even the sky was the
limit.

I’m not
alone here. Many of us Latinxs share in these kinds of formative experiences
with comic books. Javier Hernandez’s (El
Muerto) felt less odd (linguistically) after discovering that a badass
superhero like White Tiger could glide powerfully between English and Spanish. In Cuba then
Washington Heights, the quiet Frank Espinosa (Rocketo) could use his
silence, the stealth superpowers of The Phantom. In East LA Laura Molina (Cihualyaomiquiz, the Jaguar) binged on
DC and Marvel, especially keying into their social justice messages. Superman
allowed José Cabrera (Crying Macho Man) to fly up, up, and away from his Wash
Heights enclave. The discovery of a paper-recycling warehouse in San Jose led Fernando
Rodriguez (Aztec of the City) to Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Spider-Man, The Silver
Surfer, and Hulk. Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles, X-Men and Sailor Moon became fertile grounds for Serenity
Sersecion (Ghoul Time) to begin to
explore her queer Latinx identity.

For cofounder of Latino Comics Expo,Ricardo Padilla, superhero comics
allowed him to escape the gun violence and dysfunctional family life growing up
in South Central LA in the 1970s. And, I recently learned from my copilot in
the writing of the forthcoming, #brownTV,
thatWilliam
Nericcio found himself deeply identifying with Latinx Lynda Carter’s televisualized
Wonder Woman. And, in the many testimonies that make up a documentary on Latinx
superheroes, we see this with African American creators, too. For another
co-pilot of mine (SÕLCON: The Brown & Black Expo), John Jennings, Daredevil spoke to him as a bullied kid who
grew up poor in the South: the relatable poverty of Hell’s Kitchen along with
Matt Murdoch’s reeducating of his sense of sound, touch, smell to kick-ass over
bullies. (For more testimonies on this score, you might check out Latinx Comic Book Storytelling.)

These are but a few examples. There are millions more of us brown
and black folks who share similar experiences with comics. This
shouldn’t be too surprising. Traditionally locked out from access to
so-called high-brow culture, comics (pop culture generally) have proved
especially important for folks of color in the U.S.

DO:
As
far as Latinx representation in comics goes, the times have changed.

FLA:
Certainly,
and so too have my lucha/Bat cross-dressing habits, Daniel. Today we have a
veritable panoply of Latinx superheroes in comics; less so in animation, TV,
and film. So much so that I decided to spend a couple of years excavating the
history of US Latinx superheroes in mainstream comics storyworlds. In many
ways, this was a formal retracing of a history I’d experienced intuitively and randomly
since childhood. The fruits of this labor: Latinx
Superheroes in Mainstream Comics. I account for and study over 80 or so Latinx superheroes (and supervillains) created
since the 1940s; of course, this is a drop in the bucket when compared to the huge
galaxy of A-list Anglo superheroes that dominate the comic book, silver-screen,
and televisual image repertoire.

Certainly, we’re not
living the days when we were almost exclusively recreated as a malapropistic bandido
raton on speed or as slovenly and lackadaisical (Speedy’s cousin, Slowpoke
Rodriguez). Yet, given how comics continue to underrepresent Latinx experiences
and identities, we’re still largely not seen and heard.

DO: Can
you give a little more detail about the evolution of the Latinx superhero from
the 1940s (The Whip, Bat-Hombre) to the present (Miles Morales as Spider-Man,
Ava Ayala as White Tiger) as well as the representations of LGBTQ Latinx
characters?

FLA: When I first launched into the research that went into Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics,
I thought I’d find, say, a natural progression of improvement from the 1940s to
today. And this not only in terms of the content but also the form; after all,
technologies of comic book creation (in print, film, animation, and television)
have become increasingly nuanced and diverse over time.

Yet, I found
many instances in recent comics history where basics like shading and color (or
casting in film and TV) seem to willfully ignore the many colors of brown; or
where geometric design of facial features willfully sidestepped any connection
to our mestizo, indigenous heritage. I found plenty of instances where teams of
creators still imagined us Latinxs as speaking never-before-heard tonally and
rhythmically truncated English. I found plenty of recent creations that
continue to envision Latinx superheroes as the janitors of the multiverse: here
to do all the work, clean up the mess, and swept aside for the Anglo A-lister
to relish in the save-the-day glory.

This said,
there are more interesting Latinx superheroes than not. These include Miles
Morales and Ava Ayala, as you mention, along with many others like Roberto
Reyes as Ghost Rider and America Chavez. The creators bring a great will to
style in the way they geometrize these
Latinx characters: from color pallets and facial and body shapes to page
layouts and panel designs. The creators also do their due diligence; if they
aren’t Latinx, there’s the sense that they are doing the work to find out what
it means to be Latinx—and not using the racist and maligned representational
repertoire as their basis for understanding Latinx histories, experiences, and
identities. I love that Miles Morales is given a full backstory and character
support (parents and abuelitas) to fill out his Afrolatinx identity; I love
that DC finally seems to get it right with a gay Latinx superhero with Miguel
José “Bunker” Barragon. Just as Bunker kicks culo with his psionic powers, he’s
also gay—and both without much ado. This is a big step forward if you consider some
of DC’s other queer Latinx superheroes like Gregorio
de la Vega as Extraño: always geometrized
with flamboyant gestures and exaggerated declarations (“Puh-lease!”) and who is
killed off by contracting HIV from the supervillain, Hemo-Goblin.

DO: Though
Latinx superheroes more often than not appear first in comics, you explore
their appearance in TV and film. How has this leap from the comic page to
the small and big screens affected the evolution of the Latinx superhero?

FLA: The
more money involved in the creation of a Latinx superhero in the mainstream,
the less likely they will appear at all in
comic book storyworlds. To put it simply, there are nearly no Latinx
superheroes in TV and film. This is the case even when the film or TV show
recreates from a comic that actually has
Latinx superheroes. In this cross-media re-creative process, we’re obliterated.
The most egregious is arguably Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises. For all of Nolan’s mastery at superhero
storytelling, he falls more than short with the casting of Tom Hardy as Bane. Bane, after all, is one of DC’s greatest
(smartest and strongest) supervillains. He’s also Latinx. In the X-Men flicks, those that
clearly appeared in the in-print comic book storyworld as Latinx are either
white-washed (played by Spaniards) or black-faced, as with the casting of Kenyon-born
Edi
Gathegi as the Latinx Armando Muñoz (Darwin).

It gets worse. With respect to Joss Whedon (Avengers and his taking over of the helming of Justice League), Latinxs don’t even make it into the background of a
given cityscape. The same of Zach Snyder’s Man
of Steel and Batman vs. Superman.
Well, actually, with Snyder we do appear: as a gas station attendant, an
infantry soldier, and as calavera-face painted adoring folks who literally
worship at the feet of Superman. My last dig: Kenneth Brannagh’s Thor. Okay, here’s a director who
chooses to set the action in a visibly recognizable New Mexico, with the town
itself called Puente Antigua. Yet, there are no Latinxs—anywhere. Somehow, I
got hold of some footage shot but excised in post-production: a scene with café
owner, Isabela Alvarez (played
by well-known Latinx actor, Adriana Barraza) serving Thor coffee; and a scene
with visibly identifiable Latinx niños
playing in the street. With these scenes shot but left on the postproduction
room floor, Brannagh must have thought it was okay to literally erase our
presence—even though New Mexico’s a majority Latinx.

DO:
What
do you think is the next step for Latinx superheroes?

FLA: Generally,
what I see happening in the mainstream is something like this. DC tends to
churn out conveyer-belt style anything and everything with the hopes that it’ll
grab readers and therefore generate profits. Sometimes they hit the mark, as
with the bringing on of lesbian Latinx Gabby Rivera to write the America Chavez
storyline. Marvel has a longer track record of really trying to get Latinx
superheroes right. This was really visible when Latinx Joe Quesada was in the
Edior-in-Chief seat. Generally, however, what I see is an inching along with
one step forward and two steps back.

Let’s not forget that with Disney as the conglomerate over-lording
Marvel with its ownership of Marvel Studios, there’s a deep conservatism that
runs through its superhero productions. The kind of fear of Latinxs (writers,
producers, directors) that ends up erasing us from silver-screen existence.

Let’s also not forget that we’re talking about corporations
that seek dollar profit. So, perhaps we might begin to see more Latinx
superheroes on the silver screen. Disney seemed to wake (Coco) to the fact that we fill seats at the movies more than any
other demographic and so it might be worth their while to get it right. It’s likely the motivation behind casting Diego Luna
as the smart, fierce Cassian Andor who speaks loud and proud with his Mexican
Spanish accent; it’s maybe why for the first time we have a Guatemalan Latinx (Oscar
Isaac as Poe Dameron) in space. In the end, the silver-screen might begin to
get it right simply because, in this instance, dollars matter.

Honestly, though,
the next steps in Latinx superhero making have already been happening among our
fellow Latinx creators. They are the ones at the vanguard of comic book
creation. In content and form, they are the ones radically diversifying our
superhero repertoire. It could be a Javier Hernandez’s El Muerto whose
superheroic acts resonate with social justice themes—and present-day iterations
of our pre-Colombian heritage; it could Molina’s the Jaguar who studies civil law to fight deportations and who kicks culo over alt-right, neo-Nazi racists;
it could be Jaime Hernandez’s older and elderly Ti-Girls like Espectra (Maggie’s pro wrestler cousin, Xochitl Navas, grown old),
the Weeper, the robot Cheetah Torpeda from the planet Blotos, and Space Queen.It could be Edgardo
Miranda-Rodríguez’s Nuyorican La Borinqueña, undocumented Joaquín Torres as the
new Latinx Falcon, or his identifying of Groot’s ancestry as linked to that of
the Caribbean ceiba—a symbol of Afrolatinx anti-colonial resistance. There are
many others, of course.

We’ve made great
strides forward, but it’s still difficult for many of these creators to get
their work published and distributed in a massive way: from publishing
gate-keepers to distribution monopolies that crush any possibility of making a
modicum of money. As you know, this is why I decided to create, curate, and
edit the Latinographix series with OSU Press. Working hard with the amazing
team of folks at the press, we recently published Alberto Ledesma’s Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer. It’s these
stories of our everyday survival and victories that are the real superheroes.

And thanks for nightmares, too...your claim that "Aldama is everywhere" is frighteningly true! He's the intellectual El Cucuy hiding under the worn cot in my campus office, an erudite omnipresent phantom haunting all bookshelf’s.

He's out to get us to think, read and see—and all the garlic, wolfsbane, tarnished crosses, or Buffy-type talismen won't help!